McGill University Library’s digital collection of 264 cookbooks on Internet Archive, curated for Thanksgiving, provides a delightful look into what our ancestors were serving and eating back in the day, from as early as 1615 to 1966.
These cookbooks particularly help shed light on the women in our family. The recipes give us an idea of what our grandmothers, great-grandmothers, and great-great-grandmothers may have cooked and baked for their family.
From The secrets of Alexis : containing many excellent remedies against divers diseases, wounds, and other accidents, published in 1615, to Old Quebec Recipes, published in 1966, these cookbooks give us an opportunity to travel back to a time when women wore always an apron in the kitchen.
Try looking for cookbooks published when your ancestors married. Did the young bride make one of those recipes or something similar for her husband? Would she have received a cookbook at her bridal shower or for her wedding?
In the section on hors d’oeuvres in An odd volume of cookery, published in Boston in 1949, the year my parents married, suggestions for serving guests run the gamut from Lobster Newburg served in small patty cases to peanut butter spread on oblongs of toast, sprinkled with chopped bacon.
Hidden among the recipes must be at least one for tomato aspic — one of my mother’s go-to pot-luck recipes many years ago whenever our family was invited over for dinner.
I’m pretty sure the Robin Hood cookbook, published in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan in the 1950s was one of many in my mother’s personal collection.
The Cookbook of Margaret Blake from 1900, filled with almost 100 pages of handwritten recipes, is also worth a look.
The quality of the images makes it possible to try many of the recipes ourselves.
And here’s a suggestion for you.
How about one day holding a post-pandemic party with a 1960s theme? To prepare, look for the 1961 French-language cookbook that incorporates 7-Up in every recipe.
Yum!
